Bonta's battles with Trump define California attorney general race as GOP challenger tries to break through

California's Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta and Republican challenger Michael Gates are offering sharply different visions of the job: Bonta has made opposing federal overreach a central focus, while Gates argues the state's top prosecutor should prioritize crime.

The divide reflects a broader clash over the role of California's attorney general, with Bonta overseeing upward of 70 lawsuits against the president's administration, preserving federal funding and the state's independence on issues ranging from environmental regulation to immigrant relief.

Gates, a former Trump Justice Department attorney, has pursued voter identification requirements and defied state housing laws, and says his opponent's focus on battling the White House is a wrong-headed diversion. He has framed his campaign as a referendum on Bonta, who is seeking a second full term, following his initial appointment by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 and subsequent election a year later.

How deeply voters will delve into those issues is a fair question based on the Democratic leanings of the state and Bonta's status as an incumbent, said Dan Schnur, a political science professor at UC Berkeley and the University of Southern California. The result could hint at a new competitiveness for Republicans or reestablish the dominance of Democrats in the state.

"He starts out with two immense advantages in the race. The first are the benefits of incumbency. But the fact that he's a registered Democrat in such a deep blue state is of even greater benefit," Schnur said. "It's certainly possible for Gates to win, but he would need to run a very unconventional campaign to be competitive."

Bonta, a former Alameda City Council member and East Bay assemblymember who mulled a run for governor before committing to re-election, has a healthy fundraising advantage; as of the reporting period that started with the new year and ended April 18, his campaign had more than $6.3 million on hand, or 13 times as much as Gates' campaign.

"Continuity is absolutely critical to continue the work we've done," Bonta said in an interview, before listing off his office's work on enforcing housing-construction requirements, antitrust litigation targeting price fixing, combatting organized retail theft and fentanyl trafficking, promoting red-flag measures to drive down gun violence, and fighting the Trump administration leveraging federal funding to extract policy concessions.

"People are screaming across this country about the need to lower their costs and make their lives more affordable, and we're really delivering on that," he added. "I think that's top of mind for folks."

Gates launched his campaign in January, not long after leaving the Justice Department - where in 2025 he served as a deputy assistant U.S. attorney general - and spurned a run to reclaim his prior office as the city attorney of Huntington Beach, in favor of the state AG position. He draws optimism from his first-quarter fundraising outpacing Bonta by a tally of around $672,000 to $450,000.

He also contends Bonta should be more dominant in polls as an incumbent from the state's ruling political party. Combined with broad voter dissatisfaction with government, he said that soft poll position has created an opening for him to stage an upset.

"I don't really put up with nonsense. I uphold and defend the rule of law with zeal and vigor," Gates said in an interview. "That's what I want to do for California … uphold and defend the rule of law, abide by the law, and return California to a law and order state. We're currently very, very lawless right now."

There are a few tentpole issues with which Bonta's office - under both him and his predecessors - has overlapped with Gates' actions in Huntington Beach, and both claim to have gotten the upper hand. Gates authored or helped form the city's challenges to state-mandated home building requirements and the state's sanctuary law limiting local police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, and the city's efforts to institute a voter ID requirement.

Bonta emphasizes that none of those actions have come to fruition in part because of his office's successful court opposition. Gates calls the efforts in Huntington Beach a salvo against what he calls "groupthink" that has overrun state politics and policy. He alluded to that dynamic for why Proposition 36, passed in 2024 to increase penalties for theft and drug crimes and push more offenders into rehab, has not received the funding or support he believes it deserves, which he said would change under his leadership.

"There was a lot kind of broken with the way cities were just kind of plodding along … herd mentality and taking what appeared to be impulsive direction from the state of California on a lot of issues whether it's land use, housing, COVID lockdowns, whatever it was, there were just a lot of different things," Gates said.

He also touts his courtroom experience as a private attorney, city attorney and city prosecutor to contrast himself with Bonta, who he criticizes as strictly a political appointee who rode a predictable California blue wave into incumbency.

Gates is not shy about mentioning his ties to the Trump administration and wider MAGA movement, including getting support for his legislative and litigation agenda from organizations affiliated with Stephen Miller, President Trump's deputy chief of staff and preeminent policy architect.

Bonta seizes on those associations to illustrate his opponent as not being viable for Californians, calling Gates' accomplishments a list of "MAGA culture war issues" that run afoul of the law and "basically the antithesis of what Californians want."

"I respect anyone who believes in a certain approach or ideology. But I will also respectfully disagree that that ideology, as advanced by that specific candidate, is one that California wants or would accept. In fact, it's been firmly rejected multiple times," Bonta said.

He then pivoted to a major critique by Gates: the amount of time and resources that the attorney general's office has devoted to fighting the Trump administration in court. Bonta said he also wishes they weren't doing it.

"It would be better if we didn't have a presidential administration that was violating the law and trampling over the Constitution. This isn't a fight that we want. It's a fight that we have to engage in because it is breaking the law," Bonta said. "You cannot prevail if you have just a political grievance, an ideological or policy difference. You need to show a violation of the law."

"We walk and chew gum at the same time," he added. "This Trump work is additive. It's on top of all of the public safety work, housing work, gun safety work, healthcare access, labor rights, constitutional rights, consumer protection, environmental work and affordability work that we do."

In the periphery of the traditional two-party candidates, Marjorie Mikels, a longtime Southern California attorney and civic leader and activist who now lives in the East Bay, is running for the office as the Green Party candidate.

She is pragmatic about her prospects - Mikels freely admits she wouldn't be running if she might divert enough of the vote to get Gates elected - and says her run is about reinforcing the viability of her party and raising issues that are muted by big-money politics and priorities. Those issues, she said, include robust free speech protections, including for critics of the war in Gaza, cracking down on nuclear waste disposal in the state, and scrutinizing how California industry supports the growth of artificial intelligence resource consumption and its links to military technology, and the clandestine role of state infrastructure, like airports, in the military supply chain that fuels armed conflict around the world.

"We know the state is so predominantly Democrat and the Republicans are getting great support from the MAGA movement and all that, but maybe there's more than just a duopoly," Mikels said of her rationale for running. "Our (platform) is about people, the planet and peace over profit. That's our theme … to get those ideas out there, so that we see there's other possibilities."

Gates firmly believes that if he forces a runoff in November, a voter ID proposal that recently qualified for the general election could inspire a surge of conservative voters to the polls and fuel a massive upset.

"I maintain that with voter ID, there's actually now a real clear path forward," Gates said. "If he was a better candidate, a better incumbent, I don't know that I'd be in the race. So it's all of these things that sort of added up."

Schnur said the political reality is more stark and that Bonta's very visible and public work challenging the president gives him a significant advantage.

"A deep blue state like California holds deep animosity for Donald Trump, and as an incumbent Democratic attorney general, he has been in a position with official standing to confront Trump on many occasions," he said. "It would require an extremely high-profile occurrence to cause voters to put aside their traditional partisan leanings to reexamine the race."

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